main @starboundsealrb blog for art/writing resources, advice, other important stuff, and the like
143 posts
Latest Posts by kirbysreturntodreamlanddx - Page 4
Dealing With Executive Dysfunction - A Masterpost
The “getting it done in an unconventional way” method.
The “it’s not cheating to do it the easy way” method.
The “fuck what you’re supposed to do” method.
The “get stuff done while you wait” method.
The “you don’t have to do everything at once” method.
The “it doesn’t have to be permanent to be helpful” method.
The “break the task into smaller steps” method.
The “treat yourself like a pet” method.
The “it doesn’t have to be all or nothing” method.
The “put on a persona” method.
The “act like you’re filming a tutorial” method.
The “you don’t have to do it perfectly” method.
The “wait for a trigger” method.
The “do it for your future self” method.
The “might as well” method.
The “when self discipline doesn’t cut it” method.
The “taking care of yourself to take care of your pet” method.
The “make it easy” method.
The “junebugging” method.
The “just show up” method.
The “accept when you need help” method.
The “make it into a game” method.
The “everything worth doing is worth doing poorly” method.
The “trick yourself” method.
The “break it into even smaller steps” method.
The “let go of should” method.
The “your body is an animal you have to take care of” method.
The “fork theory” method.
The “effectivity over aesthetics” method.
SWORD ANGLES from the How to THINK when you Draw ENCYCLOPEDIA - the world’s ONLY encyclopedia of drawing tutorials , all of which is FREE for EVERYONE, FOREVER - you can see EVERY TUTORIAL on OUR MASSIVE INSTAGRAM HERE and OUR GIANT TWITTER HERE!
PLUS! CLICK HERE for 300 EXTRA FREE TUTORIALS!
Lorenzo!
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Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.
Symmetry Move Brush for CLIP STUDIO PAINT
I've just released this free "Symmetry Move Brush" tool on Clip Studio Assets.
Check the link for more info on what it does and what it's for: https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=1974271
The Creator's Guide to Comics Devices is OPEN!!! comicsdevices.com
An online library of visual-narrative devices that are used in the medium of comics and other sequential art.
Happy Halloween! I'm really excited to be finally launching* what is maybe one of my most ambitious, largest work yet. This online library is the next phase of a research project that began in May 2020, when I first mused on how comics as a field doesn't have a resource that catalogues devices used in the medium. Like, theatre has devices, so does literature, and film! So why shouldn't comics? I always had an interest in comics studies and analysis. I love reading, making and thinking comics. However most of my knowledge was intuitive - I learned comics from osmosis and experience. This is true for many of my peers. Speaking about comics as a creator is hard, because we don't have a robust system of language. When we had to speak, many of us tend to reach for the language developed for film by film practitioners. If there is language specific to comics, it's either scattered in multiple blogs or hidden away in academic journals. The Comics Devices library is meant to aggregate everything and everybody into a single hub! After exploring some multiple resources, alongside some original, independent research, here is the first edition! * The Comics Devices project is still a work-in-progress! It's not final, nor will it ever be. This is why I am seeking contributors to help build this library. Translations, comics examples, etc. There is a lot of work to do! If you are interested, reply to this post or submit an expression of interest on this page. Have fun everyone!! (Now time for me to melt x_x)
Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters
Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.
As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.
Deaf Characters:
Deaf characters masterpost
Deaf dialogue thread
Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)
A deaf author’s advice on deaf characters
Dialogue between deaf characters
Mute Characters
Life as a Mute
My Silent Summer: Life as a Mute
What It’s Like Being Mute
21 People Reveal What It’s Really Like To Be Mute
I am a 20 year old Mute, ask me anything at all!
Blind Characters:
The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters.
@referenceforwriters masterpost of resources for writing/playing blind characters.
The youtube channel of the wonderful Tommy Edison, a man blind from birth with great insight into the depiction of blind people and their lives.
An Absolute Write thread on the depiction of blind characters, with lots of different viewpoints and some great tips.
And finally, this short, handy masterpost of resources for writing blind characters.
Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye
4 Ways Life Looks Shockingly Different With One Eye
Learning to Live With One Eye
Adapting to the Loss of an Eye
Adapting to Eye Loss and Monocular Vision
Monocular Depth Perception
Deaf-Blind Characters
What Is It Like To Be Deafblind?
Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights
Deaf and Blind by 30
Sarita is Blind, Deaf, and Employed (video)
Born Deaf and Blind, This Eritrean American Graduated Harvard Law School (video)
A Day of a Deaf Blind Person
Lesser Known Things About Being Deafblind
How the Deaf-Blind Communicate
Early Interactions With Children Who Are Deaf-Blind
Raising a DeafBlind Baby
If you have any more resources to add, let me know! I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.
I hope this helps, and happy writing! <3
writers' resources
sick of using "very _____" ? : https://www.losethevery.com/
want to simplify your writing ? : https://hemingwayapp.com/
writing buddies / motivation ? : https://nanowrimo.org
word you're looking for but don't know ? : https://www.onelook.com/thesaurus/
need a fantasy name ? : https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/
need a fantasy name ? : https://nameberry.com/
want a name with meaning ? : https://www.behindthename.com/
who wants a map maker! : https://inkarnate.com/
story building / dnd ? : https://www.worldanvil.com/
need some minimalistic writing time ? : https://zenpen.io/
running out of ideas ? : https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/
setting a goal ? how about 3 pages / day ? : https://new.750words.com/
what food did they eat ? : https://www.foodtimeline.org/
questions on diversity within writing ? : https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/
now what was that colour called ? : https://ingridsundberg.com/2014/02/04/the-color-thesaurus/
want more? : https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lyralit :]
Do any of u have decent recipes that are like 5 ingredients (not including spices) and take 45 mins or less to prepare i gotta stop eating sandwiches for dinner
I hate that I’m always trying to find cool biology themed stuff to wear but all the “nature inspired” clothing companies just have like two crossed arrows or a minimalistic mountain on a sweatshirt. Fucking lame, that’s barely even nature-adjacent. Put the life cycle of a salamander on a jacket, put hyena skeleton patterns on leggings, put a damn field guide of birds of prey on a peacoat and THEN you can have my money. Do NOT give me a shirt with a leaf on it that says “stay wild” or some bullshit I would much prefer clothing that broadcasts to everyone around me how many teeth an adult Jaguar has or how some pitcher plants can catch and digest rats.
tbh i would love any kind of internet security list you could provide whenever you have time! :)
*kracks knuckles*
INTERNET SECURITY LIST AND OTHER FIREFOX EXTENSIONS
▷ use firefox, not safari or edge and Definitely Not google chrome;
▷ always use duckduckgo as your regular search engine. even w the extensions below you’ll see that none of them will light up bc duckduckgo is awesome and doesn’t track u;
▷ go to your add-ons and get these extensions (alphabetical order):
— adNauseum (fake-clicks on every ad it detects a bunch of times so the company's analytics will be all fucky-wucky and it will cost companies lotsa money)
— cookie autodelete
— decentraleyes
— disconnect
— don’t track me google
— duckduckgo privacy essentials
— hoxx vpn proxy (free, although limited, vpn)
— https everywhere
— localCDN
— privacy badger (redirects your trackers babey!)
— privacy possum (falsifies data so it costs companies as much money as possible)
— TrackMeNot (does randomly generated searches on random search engines so it hides what you really search for AND makes analytics all fucky-wucky)
— uBlock origin (superior adblocker)
— WhatCampaign (swaps out google analytics with fake shit, do you see a pattern? once again! the analytics are, repeat after me, fucky-wucky!)
▷ other add-ons that i do recommend but have nothing to do with tracking/adblocking:
— auto tab discard (closes ur tabs after long time no use, mend it to your own settings);
— bitwarden (one place to keep all your passwords, would not recommend putting Very Important ones like your bank account there but, like, tumblr works);
— dark mode (automatically makes websites dark, isn't perfect but it's nicer than being blinded by every Wikipedia page at 3am when you're losing that sense of existence and what is and isn't real anymore)
— firefox multi account containters (sort your tabs babey! give cute colors to your tabs, separates them from work/personal/shopping/etc.)
— google docs dark mode (turn off dark mode and use this one for docs, works amazingly)
— grammarly
— honey (save money, use honey ;))
— mind the time (keep track of how much time you've spent on a tab)
— reddit container and facebook container (two seperate add-ons but keeps your reddit and facebook stuff separate from the rest)
— reverso context (for my fellow bilinguals who sometimes Do Not Know the words and then there they are)
— shinigami eyes (it's a starting extension but it tries to hide transphobic and other anti-lgbtq+ stuff from your view. when you see something's slipped through, you can report it to them so they hide it from other users)
— simple tab groups (sort your tabs in groups with names n stuff)
— sponsorblock (also a starting extension, but hides sponsored-moments from youtube videos and makes you enjoy the content you're there for, not the 783rd hello fresh or raid shadow legends ad. it's user-driven, so be sure to submit the moments where there is sponsored content to help other viewers!)
— tranquility reader (if u don't want to be overwhelmed by all the functions on a webpage and just. read. the. damn. text.)
— unpaywall (a MUST for all students or people in research-driven workfields. read those paywalled items and articles! learning should be free! another option for this extension is 12ft ladder)
and those are all the extensions i currently have on my firefox. if you have any recommendations, drop 'em in my inbox and I'll add them to this list!! hope this helps you out!
small reminder that adding more extensions might make your firefox slower, but trust me, is alllll worth it.
stay safe out there on the big wide web that wants to know everything about you. don't tell them more than what you want them to know xx
I made a Room Building tutorial! Lemme know if it helps! 🧡
Tip me here| Commission info here!
Limits of the Human Body
Body Heat = 107.6 F
Cold Water = 40 F
Hot Air = 300 F
High Altitude = 15,000 ft
Starvation = 45 days
Diving Depth = 282 ft
Lack of Oxygen = 11 minutes
Blood Loss = 40%
Dehydration = 7 days
on a whim I made a palette game dedicated to…. UNUSUAL color palettes. feel free to participate in any way you’d like
anyways send me some requests and a palette combo and i’ll try to draw stuff for my own challenge lmao (though i might just draw stuff on my own idk)
So uh….some dude apparently recreated Adobe Photoshop feature-for-feature, for FREE, and it runs in your browser.
Anyway, fuck Adobe, and enjoy!
some fucking resources for all ur writing fuckin needs
* body language masterlist
* a translator that doesn’t eat ass like google translate does
* a reverse dictionary for when ur brain freezes
* 550 words to say instead of fuckin said
* 638 character traits for when ur brain freezes again
* some more body language help
(hope this helps some ppl)
Spent a long time on this art resource/reference masterpost! Finally starting to edit to add more. This will be REGULARLY updated so it’s gonna get huge. If you have a request for resources for me to find OR have a resource you want me to add, just send me an ask :D
General Anatomy/Human stuff:
body quick tips
painting/drawing straight hair
how to draw eyes
arm squish/bend tip
chest/pecks with raised arms tip
long hair how to
male torso anatomy (back)
learn manga male anatomy (torso & arm)
male torso anatomy (front)
head and hair tips (scroll a bit, it’s in one of the images!)
how to draw noses
ears tilty tip
arm tips
two tips for drawing women’s hair
drawing teeth
anatomy tips
random hair and mouth ref anime
leg muscle anatomy ref
arm muscles anatomy ref
knees reference
arm ref study
quick arm tut tip
how to draw arm
shoulders n sleeves
Poses:
umbrella poses
random female poses
random anatomy pose thing
chibi sleeping in hands pose
laying poses
elf (?) with staff poses
holding phone half bod
peeny wolf pose set
perspective pose sheet
anatomy poses
crossed arms ref sheet
holding baby poses
Hands:
how to draw hands 1
hand refs & tutorial 2
hand tutorial 3
hand tutorial 4
36 hands
how to draw hands in 10 minutes
hands ref 2
hand gestures and simplifying the hand
arm & hand ref
500 hands
Diversity:
stop drawing natives red
wheelchair tutorial
drawing fat people
vitiligo notes for artists
darkskin palms
epicanthic folds
biracial characters
do’s and don’ts of thick lips
Animals/Creatures:
how to draw falcon beaks
canine studies (broken down into parts)
feline tiger ref
Insect wing venation
Musculature of a T-Rex
Pony bodies tutorial
Hyena Nose tutorial
horse reference
drawing horns
Flesh tutorial
bird tips
wing basics
making mythical creatures look realistic
pony heads tutorial
dragon designing tutorial pt 3/3
pony wings tutorial
hedgie bodies
Furry/Anthro:
dogquest’s pixel tutorial
furry portrait tutorial
furry pants tutorial
how to draw paws/pawhands
fur direction reference
anthro tips
muzzle shapes
furry styles
anthro expressions
f2u chibi-ish furry base
furry / cartoon head tutorial
f2u furry base/pose w three different ears
drawing humans! for animal artists
Backgrounds:
how to draw debris
fire tutorial
night sky tutorial
materials study with notes
tree tutorial
water tutorial
tangents??
ocean painting
clouds tutorial
bubbles
painty background studies tips
peony tutorial
lakeside tutorial
quick flowers for the lazy
mistletoe vs holly
Perspective:
foreshortening coil technique
foreshortening tutorial
Webcomic:
medibang comic panel tutorial
how i make webcomics/webtoons
how to color comics
the art of lettering comics
comic/doujinshi paneling
in depth webcomic tutorial
Coloring:
The colorpicking problem
72 Color Combinations
How ViPOP uses color
Hair coloring tutorial by rosuuri
Gurochii moe quick eye tutorial
Anime eye tutorial
Mermaid tail tutorial
Grayscale to Color painting tutorial
chibi eye walkthrough
skin tone tutorial 1
curly hair tutorial
color palette
coloring tutorial
light, it gets everywhere
comfort color
skin coloring tutorial
holographic tutorial
dappled lighting effect
cute/bright coloring tutorial
pattern trick
arcana character coloring tut
Expressions/ Meme / style:
small body language study
expressions reference
how to cute
Platonic cuddles meme
expression reference : nervous
flustered expression meme
drawing expressions tutorial/key
Pixel Art:
Pixel icon tutorial
Ice cream
Moving clouds tutorial
50x50 pixel doll tutorial
pixelin’s pixel process
pixel expression ref
pixel eye blinking tutorial
how to pixel liquids
Clothing / Accessories:
Shoes
Fancy color tip / ref
Chainmail
short reference
learn manga basic pleated skirt tutorial
learn manga basic frills
random clothing refs
chainmail brush
clothing ref masterpost
pinstripes tips
cloth texture tips
how to clothing folds
Misc:
Sketchfab 3d Models
Mikeymegamega on YT for anime/ecchi/etc
Gentei_sozai on twitter for chibi poses
S0zalsan on twitter for random poses
mecha basics
75 tutorials
Obvious art tips you might have forgotten
Mosaic effect
how to draw a cute chibi
fighting artblock
cute pikachu base
painting a face tutorial
volume commissions mini tutorial
arcana characters tutorial reference
notes from the “animators survival kit”
concept art tutorial
another art resource masterpost
MS paint tips and tricks
Reference table for drawing CONSISTENT faces
@hanari0716 on twitter for HELLA references
animation guide for beginners
Brushes:
Foliage brushes
cityscape brushes
ghibli brushes
clip studio paint assets
PS brush pack
Okay, you need to make sure you play this game at some point. Maybe not today or anything, because you’ll need about thirty minutes and a serious willingness to understand how it works, but - it’s so worth it. It’s basically an answer to our occasional frustration - why do assholes always come out on top? - and the beautiful thing about it is that not only does it explain how that happens, but also how we can change it.
“In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game.”
being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five
what the fuck is this genre of gif called. i had a collection of these kinds of images and i lost them all these are only ones i can find.
i am not joking we need to force teach cooking in schools. like. it is an essential thing for survival. do you know how easy it is to make things if you know even the bare bones shit about how cooking works. we need to teach teenagers how far you can take an onion and some other veggies it''s sad that people grow up not knowing how to prepare literally anything. and i'm not talking about oh this home ed class taught me how to make chicken nuggets at home i'm talking about learning the balancing of sweetness and acidity and saltiness and bitterness and shit like that and techniques and oil temperatures and how meats cook. it needs to be taught because it's literally not even that difficult and it matters so much
IMPORTANT POST FOR ALL ARTISTS
IF YOURE IN NEED OF A WEBSITE WITH A FUCKTON OF GOOD COLOR PALETTES. GO HERE.
it's mostly a website used for pixel artists to share their palettes for free download, BUT from my experience as someone who does pixel art from time to time, using it as a resource for my regular drawings also works very good. theres big and small color schemes on this website
pixel artists are very very good at making color palettes and MANY of these are far more versatile than the regular coolors 5-color color schemes youll see floating around on art resource compilations. you can search up any tag to find the palettes youre looking for (the maximum amount of colors you can upload on a palette here is 256 so the sky really is the limit), and you can even search by the number of colors you want. theres literally thousands of free palettes put up by artists there for free downloadable use.
this is a really precious service and i always siphon people looking for color schemes here when i can. go check it out
i learned how to make images look vhs-y and im obsessed with it. here's the brush i used for step 4
Some people have asked me if I can publish my mapmaking tools. So I developed a software. 🙂
Here is the result:
Let’s Draw Wings
I’ve gotten the question/request of how I draw wings lots and lots so I’ve decided to make a dedicated post!
Now…I’m no master, but I have found a way that I like to draw wings that’s efficient for me. There three main points:
References
Simplification
Texture Management
First of all - References
My favorite wing reference of all time is this post by Jenn on Twitter. I have both the images saved but I use the Wing Shapes one, below, alllllll the time. Like for real all the time!
I also keep pretty extensive collections of wing photo reference. When I’m having trouble, I’ll trace a few or do studies to get back into the swing of things. Here are links to my Pinterest boards:
Broadwing Reference (passive soaring and high-speed)
Longwing Reference (active soaring)
Shortwing Reference (elliptical and hovering)
Secondly - Simplification
When I sketch wings, I simplify Jenn’s diagram even further -
For me, the key to drawing wings is simplifying the wing down - from the structure to the feathers - the goal for me is to be able to draw them quickly and have the proper information conveyed. It needs to look like a wing in the base sketch. If it doesn’t, no amount of rendering and extra feathers will help. I like to break the wing into the three main moving parts. The orange is one part, then the purple contains two main chunks feathers that you can group together and move as their own parts.
On top of that, I like to think of wings like a sheet of paper. They can bend and fold in on themselves, with the orange meaty bits anchoring everything together.
Lastly - Texture
I like to call wings “texture monsters”. Feathers are hard to manage and can easily make wings look over-busy and muddy. Just like before, I break the wing into chunks so I can spend less time drawing the wing and it’s feathers:
Then you can put it all together and push things further -
So yeah this is how I throw wings together! The wings I draw aren’t super technical or detailed, but I what matters for me is that they look and feel like believable wings at a glance -
~ Larn
–
Discord | Patreon | Art Prints
i love your art you should do a shading tutorial (but only if you want to ofc)
THANKS!!!! AHH i did make one at one point
i could update it bc theres like really vague points in there that i've learned a bit more about now, but here it is :)
We just moved into a new house that has zero mirrors in it due to having needed to work on the bathrooms before the place was livable reasons, and not seeing my reflection for a week has made me reprioritize 'vampires don't show in mirrors' on my list of correct and good vampire traits.
I've always like vampires not showing in stuff, but it now feels necessary to the monster.
-Not seeing yourself has a depersonalizing effect that belongs in narratives concerned with othering.
-If i want to look nice at the moment, I have to trust my partner to make me up. Finding a second vampire is both threat and boon at every level.
-clinging to a selfie or portrait painting from when you were alive as a way to recognize and remember who you are, and slowly coming to recognize the image as a fully different being, someone who's dead.
It's not like people concerned with vampires don't play in this space, but, alongside sunlight, this often feels like one of the things jettisoned early. Especially in today's surveillance state, where it's Easy to lose control of one's image, that feels like a misstep.